Computing systems may include peripheral devices. Peripheral devices may add to or change the functionality of the computing system. In many cases, peripheral devices are connected to the computing system using an interconnect. The interconnect may implement a standard bus protocol, such as any of the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) family of bus protocols.
Some computing systems are networked. These computing systems may include a host processor, host memory, and a network interface device to send and receive packets. It is common for the network device to be in the form of a network interface card (NIC) that is interconnected with the host processor by way of a bus. The host processor may send the packets to the NIC for transmission onto a network.